


The Tree and the Serpent

by limerental



Series: Flora Verse [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley's plant origin story, Gen, agriculture au but for irl, horticultural self-indulgence, mostly meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-05-19 20:12:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19363450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/limerental/pseuds/limerental
Summary: Contrary to how the story is usually told, It was not actually completely Crowley's idea.It being the infamous moment in the Garden that led to everything that happened next.Companion piece to On Flora but can be read on its own





	The Tree and the Serpent

Contrary to how the story is usually told, It was not actually completely Crowley's idea.

It being the infamous moment in the Garden that led to everything that happened next.

No, back before the beginning, he wasn't particularly well-liked or highly-ranked among the legions of Hell. He gave off an air of trying far too hard and mostly failing at it, and his evil schemes seemed to lack that diabolical oomph that came from a true visionary. 

Mostly, Down Below just wanted him out of their hair, and luckily, big things were stirring up above. Who knew what could be waiting up there while Creation was hot off the presses. Better to send someone they wouldn't miss too badly if it all went south.

Reconnaissance, his superiors told him. Go up there and take a peek. Make some trouble if you can.

And so, he slithered up through the fresh earth, tongue flicking against the dewy grass, and after a time, he came upon the Tree.

“Good morning,” said the Tree to the serpent.

“Good what?” said the serpent, Crawly, who had only been in the Garden since just before midnight. Pink rays of sunlight filtered down through the forest canopy, and dust motes spun among them, illuminating the floriferous undergrowth. He tipped his reptilian head up toward the light, a warmth sinking in to his jewel-black scales. 

“I suspect you are here for what needs to be done,” said the Tree, her branches swaying in a whispering breeze. Crawly blinked. He suspected he must be.

“I'm meant to sssstir up ssssome trouble,” the serpent said, though a beat later thought maybe he shouldn't have revealed that to just any old foliage he happened to meet. “I mean, I'm here to... sssee the ssssightsss.”

“I hear it is beautiful,” said the Tree. “Pity I don't see the same way the rest do.”

“How come you know I wasss here?” the serpent asked. “If you can't ssssee anything?” He had never met a tree before.

“Oh, there are many ways of seeing,” the Tree said. “Many ways indeed.”

“Of courssse,” said Crawly. Come to think of it, he wasn't sure where exactly the Tree's voice was coming from. “What are you sssupposssed to be, then?”

“I am the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil,” the Tree said, branches shivering. “Knowledge of Everything and also Everything that Isn't. Any who shall eat of my fruit will possess that knowledge.”

“Ah, I ssssee,” said Crawly. 

“Would you like a taste?” The Tree's leaves swayed to reveal fruit swollen with ripeness.

The serpent, sensing a trick, paused with his tongue flicked out between his fangs. He cocked his head to consider the Tree and the bright red fruit but thought better of it.

“Nice try,” he said. “But I heard about you. Sssaid it's Forbidden for any in the Garden to eat of your fruit.”

“Ah, but you are not of the Garden.”

“Me? I'm but an ordinary sssserpent,” said Crawly. “I do 'ssspect that would have the wrath of God on me. Ssssuddenly knowing everything that isss and isssn't and all.”

“A clever serpent,” said the Tree.

It was then that the Woman, Eve, happened to step into the clearing, barely noticing the serpent or the Tree, as she was too busy attempting to track down the last of the unnamed animals that roamed the Garden. 

All at once, the serpent had a marvelously evil idea. He uncoiled from the grass toward the Woman, knowing they would be quite appreciative of him in Hell if all went as poorly as he hoped.

And you know how the rest of the story goes.

 

Despite his minimal contribution to the affair and a lingering feeling that the whole thing would have gone ahead whether he had whispered in Eve's ear or not, Crowley received illustrious commendations for his contribution to the Original Sin and was fast promoted to Chief Adversary on Earth.

For a millenia or two, he mostly forgot about the Tree.

Human beings were rather boring for a while there, scrabbling about in the dirt and hitting one another with sticks and somehow still managing to survive year to year to continue Adam's line and spread across the land. It all seemed to be sheer luck that they made it at all, but then, all of a sudden, the humans began to get much better at this agriculture thing.

Crowley stood in a Mesopotamian field, watching the bent backs of peasant farmers as they dug new irrigation ditches for their thirsty crops. This had been scrubby desert the last time he visited, but now it flushed green with life. The plants themselves seemed unbothered by their new domesticated lives. Vines climbed heartily up offered scaffolding, and crops sank their roots deep into the fertile soil.

He stepped beneath an olive tree for some respite from the glare of the sun, and the branches rustled in a breeze off the nearby Euphrates.

“Hello, serpent,” said the olive tree. The voice was familiar, unmistakable.

“It's you,” said Crowley. The leaves quivered with amusement.

“It's always me,” said the Tree. “There is a sliver of me in growing things the world over.”

“Not every single one, surely. Some of them just seem so ordinary.” Crowley gestured at the bountiful crops that the farmers dug carefully beside. They seemed quite happy to grow where they were planted and hardly made much sense when spoken to. Quite a step down from the obstinate plants that had grown wild in the Garden.

“No, not every plant,” said the Tree. “But any plant.”

“That's a smidgen unnerving,” said Crowley. “Will have to watch out for peeping shrubs now, won't I?”

“Oh, I am always watching.”

“And what do you see?”

“Everything that is and everything that isn't.”

“Yeah, I remember that much.”

“I see that they have been learning well,” said the Tree, almost smugly.

“Are you-- do you have something to do with this?”

“They are never as far from the Garden as they think.”

A few centuries down the line, Crowley met Aziraphale for lunch in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and the very same olive tree greeted him at the center of a mud-brick court, now sitting proudly below the lush green of the terraces.

“Oh,” said Crowley. “I've been here before.”

“Mmph?” Aziraphale said, mouth full of dried figs. He swallowed. “What, my dear?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Really some stellar work on these gardens, isn't it?”

“I suppose so,” said the angel. “I find I feel itchy with too many plants around. I don't trust them.”

“What did plants ever do to you?”

“Nothing yet,” said Aziraphale. “But I'm sure they have something in the works.”

“Assuredly,” said Crowley. “Most definitely.”

The olive tree waggled its leaves at him as they passed beneath its shadow, and Crowley gave it a wink.

 

Through the years, the serpent watched with amusement as human beings became increasingly creative with their horticultural endeavors. It was the natural expectation that they would learn how to extract and cultivate every edible plant available to them, and human beings did so with great gusto. 

That they discovered the benefits of fermentation without much demonic nudging was less expected, and their enthusiasm in consuming all sorts of plants that by all accounts were meant to kill or grossly injure them, showed a level of pure humanness that no demon or angel could ever emulate. 

Not that Crowley didn't try his darnedest to do so of course. It is a little known fact that a good three quarters of all currently existing mixed drinks and many that have been lost to time can be at least partially attributed to a certain demonic entity.

And then, at some point, they started keeping certain plants around for no discernible reason besides that they were _pretty_. Soon, there were more new varieties and colors and shapes and sizes of plants than Crowley could even keep track of. He made frequent trips to the sprawling gardens that seemed to crop up everywhere, sometimes accompanied by the angel. Always had been good for clandestine meetings, gardens.

“That must be one of yours,” Aziraphale said, gesturing at a massive, bulbous flower spike just about to split open into bloom. She was prominently displayed among other exotic tropical plants, protected from the chill air in an elaborate glass greenhouse and advertised as a “Corpseflower”. A faint whiff of the putrid stench that was soon to come was obvious to refined supernatural senses.

“Downstairs would like to think so,” Crowley said. “But it blooms so rarely and then goes dormant and grows boring green leaves the rest of the time. You'd think a truly evil plant would cause a bit more trouble than that.”

“I suppose,” said the angel. “It smells wretched though.”

“Doesn't smell wretched if you're a beetle or a bot fly. Smells very sensual, I would assume.”

“I would rather not discuss what beetles find arousing.”

“Suit yourself, then.”

 

Crowley wasn't exactly behind the invention of houseplants, but he also wasn't _not_ behind it. 

The very first plant he brought home was mostly unintentional. 

The novelty of growing plants in containers rather than in the ground had not yet worn off. It was a lowly potted palm tree, the sort trendy restaurants had begun decorating their patios with, as if the diners would ignore the grey haze in the skies and imagine they were in the tropics. Perhaps order more fruity drinks.

He didn't _intend_ to steal the plant exactly, but it had sat out all summer mostly neglected and now autumn was well underway, and there was imminent cold in the forecast. He told himself it was simply an aesthetic choice. The green fronds did look rather nice against the grey walls of his flat.

“Hello there,” he said to the quivering tree. “Suppose we're flatmates, then.”

And if a number of other outdoor palm and ficus and croton and banana tree owners were inspired that same night to try bringing the poor plants in for a change, well, that was mere coincidence.

From then on, his flat got decidedly more and more green.

In the 70s when Crowley read about the supposed benefits of talking to houseplants, it was with great skepticism, for he had been talking to plants since the very beginning, and he didn't know that it ever did them any good. 

But human beings were always coming up with some newfangled approach to plant husbandry that he wouldn't have considered, so he deigned to try it.  
Constructive criticism never hurt anybody, he thought. If there was one thing he'd learned in Hell, it was the power of a good talking to.

“You,” he said to a drooping Cast Iron Plant that had certainly not been pulling its weight recently. “I won't tolerate that nonsense. Either buck up or die already. There's no need for the dramatics.” The Cast Iron Plant visibly perked up.

“Huh,” said Crowley, though he shouldn't have been surprised. A side effect of cultivation was that more plants than not went soft and got fussy, forgetting the wild jungles where their ancestors had fought root and rhizome to survive. The plants he found himself most fond of, however, were those that hadn't quite forgotten and didn't have much need for his frequent motivational rants. 

Some plants still stubbornly remembered the Garden.

It wasn't often, but sometimes, Crowley would pause on a city street beneath a row of trees with branches rustling. He would get word of some tiny town in the countryside celebrating a very old and immense tree that had grown in its central square for no one knew how long. He would hear a low, thrumming whisper as he walked among a garden or watered his plants in the mornings.

“Do you think it remembers?” Aziraphale asked as they stopped beneath an apple tree in one botanical garden or another.

“That's assuming it's even the right tree,” Crowley said. He never asked the Tree what variety it was, after all, and it wasn't as if he had been briefed on the sorts of fruit he was likely to encounter in the Garden. “Some say, you know, pomegranate.”

“Doesn't have quite the same cadence to it.”

“No,” says Crowley, and he stares up at the lowered branches, the drooping red fruit. He didn't have to look to know that Aziraphale was watching him. There were many ways of seeing, after all.

Sometimes, he was the serpent in the garden again, head cocked and listening. Considering a taste.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[PODFIC] On Flora, and, The Tree and the Serpent, by limerental](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20161753) by [Thimblerig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig)




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